Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Today's interesting political news and comment

Update

Phishing

Wednesday at rehab I got a robo call on my cell. A woman
said that my Wells Fargo account had unfortunately been locked. To unlock the
account, press one for their security department. I'm sure they would have
wanted my account number, pass word, SS number, etc. to "unlock" the
account. And they would unlock--and empty it. Since I don't have a Well Fargo
account, I deleted without worrying about it. Had several emails lately saying
my account at this or that bank had been restricted. again, I didn't have
accounts with them. They try until the hit a bank you do business with. Never
give info like SS or account numbers to someone who solicits you. ~Bob

Excerpt: It might be argued that, in a demotic age,
politicians have to consent to indignities if they are to be elected; if so, it
is hardly surprising that we repeatedly elect nonentities distinguished only
for their ambition and relentless pursuit of office. Unfortunately, mediocrity
and ambition often combine with vast self-regard; and there is no better example
of it than Anthony Blair. ... . Social problems, when they are on a
sufficiently large scale, create two large classes of dependents: those who are
dependent on the government because of their own behaviour, and those who are
employed by the government to alleviate the inevitable consequences of that
behaviour. In other words, a very large vested interest is created in the
continuance of the very behaviour that causes social problems.

This is an interview with Andrew Klavan, who was a Liberal
Jew studying at Berkley in his youth, now a conservative Christian, very
successful author, also a frequent commentator with a wry sense of humor. In
the discussion we hear a great deal about why he came to reject what he sees as
the false ideas underlying Progressive thought (which one might also call
modernist secular) and how he thinks of a variety of subjects. It struck me
that this might be an interesting discussion for anyone to hear, even if they
don't consider themselves to be conservative, because there certainly are no
Far Right opinions offered, and what is talked about is in a quite reasonable
way. It might be a bit of a bridge between the different positions people
sometimes fall into. --Del

Excerpt: Apparently plenty of voters in Joseph D.
Morrissey's Richmond-area House of Delegates conviction were OK with his
conviction in the scandal involving his 17-year-old secretary, whose nude photo
was found on his cellphone and allegedly shared with a friend. Morrissey has
repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, saying his phone was hacked. The young woman,
who denies they had sex, is now pregnant. ... Morrissey's victory was not
unprecedented: Through four previous elections, most voters overlooked or even
embraced the lawmaker's flamboyant history of fistfights, contempt-of-court
citations and disbarment. The 57-year-old bachelor, who fathered three children
out of wedlock with three different women, repeatedly won at least 70 percent
of the vote as a Democrat.

Funny. But this PC of women in the infantry is going to get
troops killed, male and female. ~Bob. Amen. And casualties from badly thrown
grenades will pale before the numbers of military and civilians who are going
to be killed by policies driven by PC, moral relativism, and multiculturalism.
We are at war and we are not even allowed to name the enemy that has declared
it. --Chet Nagle, author of LazarusMan.

Let us hope that these Dega(r) tribes from Vietnam are able to receive refugee status, and
(hopefully) to eventually join their brethren already here in the US.
They suffered greatly for their loyalty to us in the war, and (for some) for
their conversion to Christianity. Please write and call your reps and urge
them to ask the UN to push forward their refugee status as a politically and
religiously oppressed people, and ask them to help the STMP (Save the Montagnard Peoplehttp://montagnards.org -
an organization run by our Special Forces comrades) relocate them to the US. BTW,
STMP, a 100% volunteer organization, is always in need of both physical
and financial assistance, if you have either the time and / or money to spare.)
Best, Jim. Our abandoned friends. They trusted America--silly them. ~Bob

Excerpt: The 26-year-old veteran gave
a spine-tingling account of stepping on a landmine in Iraq -- pausing
long enough on the mine's pressure plate to allow his fellow squad members to
get clear of the blast. ... After Times-Union staff began digging, the lie
was uncovered. There was no landmine, and there were no injuries from one.
Bartlett-King was kicked out of the Army with an other-than-honorable discharge
due to drug abuse, according to a copy of his records obtained by the
Times-Union.

Excerpt: John Boehner's former bartender once made plans to slip
poison into the House speaker's drink, or shoot him and drive away, authorities
say. Among the reasons driving the alleged assassination plot: Michael Hoyt
heard voices that told him Boehner was evil. He thought the Ohio Republican was
the devil. He blamed Boehner for the Ebola outbreak. And he thought the speaker
was mean to him.

Republicans have
gained more than 900 state legislative seats since 2010. By Chris Cillizza

Excerpt: Everyone knows by now that 2010 and 2014 were very
good to the Republican Party. What they don't understand (or understand well
enough) is just how good. Yes, Republicans now control the Senate and have
their largest majority in the House since World War II. But it's down ballot
(way down ballot) where the depth of the Republican victories over the past
three elections truly reveal themselves -- and where the impact will be felt
over the long term.

Excerpt: "Whether one is a conservative or a radical, a
protectionist or a free trader, a cosmopolitan or a nationalist, a churchman or
a heathen, it is useful to know the causes and consequences of economic
phenomena." That quotation, from Nobel laureate George J. Stigler, is how
Dr. Thomas Sowell begins the fifth edition of "Basic Economics." It's
a book that explains complex economic phenomena in a way that many economists
cannot. And, I might add, it provides an understanding of some economic
phenomena that might prove elusive to a Ph.D. economist.

Excerpt: A few days ago, my wife saw an ad for Liam Neeson’s
latest flick, Taken 3, another in a series featuring him as Bryan Mills,
ex-intelligence operative who’s a one-man killing machine, against a boodle of
bad guys. This latest outing is likely another of the formulaic, gratuitously
violent shoot-em-ups for which he has become famous in his senior years. So my
wife says to me, “You know, I like him; maybe we ought to go see that movie.”
Well, Liam, the already slim chance of that happening just became nonexistent
upon my reading your expletive-laced anti-gun comments when being asked about
the French terror killings during a promotional tour press conference. At
this gulfnews.com
webpage, you can see Neeson posing in front of a wall-sized backdrop for
his flick. The aging actor is depicted on the poster with a grimly determined
visage and a black (gasp!) semi-automatic firmly in hand, ready to blast away.
With that as a backdrop, the vintage vigilante hip-shot a full load of liberal
hyperbole at the gun-owning American audience that has made his movies so
successful: (Hollywood Hypocrite. Or is that redundant? ~Bob)

Excerpt: Upon arrival, the victim said four people had
forced their way into her home.

According to the victim, one of the suspects put a gun to
her head and demanded money.

After hearing the victim scream, her husband walked out of
the bedroom and fired several shots as the suspects. ... Upon arrival, police
discovered 28-year-old Antonio Bell suffering from multiple gunshot wounds. ...
Detective later arrested Tyree Hoagland and charged him with home invasion
first degree, criminal attempt armed robbery, aggravated assault , possession
of a firearm during the commission of a crime, possession of a firearm by a
convicted felon and theft by receiving stolen property.

Excerpt: According to the
Associated Press, an Alabama
middle school principal has come up with the brilliant plan of letting children
throw canned goods in the event of a violent intruder as a means of
self-defense. Why do I get an image of Ewoks throwing rocks at Imperial
walkers? W.F. Burns Middle School Principal Priscella Holley sent home a letter
to parents last week asking for students to bring in an 8-ounce canned good to
contribute to the communal defense. (8 oz. cans are too small a caliber, no
stopping power. I suggest at least 12 oz. cans, if the kids can handle them.
And they need to practice every day. Remember, when cans are outlawed, only
outlaws will have cans! ~Bob)

Guntry clubs target a
new breed of shooter: younger, more affluent and female. By Michael S.
Rosenwald

Excerpt: The high-end ranges come as the $15 billion
gun industry’s sales have
more than doubled since 2005. Fears
of regulations with a Democrat in the Oval Office have juiced much of
that growth, which is now leveling out. But experts also say an industry shift
away from hunting culture has helped spawn a new generation of firearms
enthusiasts buying up sleekly designed handguns and AR-15 rifles for tactical
shooting practice. The average age of new target shooters is 33, while
47 percent live in urban or suburban areas, and 37 percent are
female, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade
association for the firearms industry.

Armed Robbers Enter
Restaurant, Force Owner and His Wife to the Ground — Then the Guy Who Was Still
Eating Got Up…

Excerpt: A pair of armed robbery suspects reportedly entered
a Houston
restaurant as the owner was preparing to close for the night on Saturday. The
men went after Koy Sam, the owner of the restaurant, and his wife, forcing them
to the ground. ... As one of the robbery suspects went for the register, a
customer still finishing up his meal in the restaurant turned the tables in the
huge way. He got up out of his seat, pulled his own firearm and bravely
confronted the suspects, KHOU-TV reports.

Excerpt: "She arrived at the location and a male began
approaching the vehicle she thought was there to pick up the pizza," Capt.
Stephen Fore with the DeKalb County Police Department said. "When he got
to her he produced a handgun and forced her out of the vehicle and on to the
ground." Fore said she had her own handgun in her pocket and was able to
reach for it and shoot the suspect.

Excerpt: The Affordable Care Act is now law, but controversy
over the bill is far from over. Plaintiffs of all stripes -- from nuns to
businesses to Congress itself -- have challenged Obamacare, as well as its
implementation by the executive branch. In a new report from the NCPA, Senior
Research Fellow Ann Purvis outlines many of the cases surrounding the
Affordable Care Act. Ongoing controversies include:

Excerpt: On Sept 9, 2009 in a joint session of Congress,
Obama said in his health care reform, under our plan, no federal dollars
will be used to fund abortion. In an eleventh hour ploy to garner a remnant of
pro-life congressional Democrats absolutely needed to pass the Affordable Care
Act, the president issued an executive order on March 24, 2010 and said, ‘The
act maintains current Hyde Amendment restrictions governing abortion policy and
extends those restrictions to duly created health insurance exchanges.'” “It
turns out that those ironclad promises by the president himself, are absolutely
untrue.” (Easier to list the times he told the truth and kept his promises than
the lies and knowingly-false promises. Correction to story. The "lie of
the year" was, "If you like your plan, you can keep your plan."
~Bob)

Excerpt: The House of Representatives passed a Department of
Homeland Security spending bill Wednesday that effectively defunds President
Obama's November 2014 executive amnesty program. "The House defended its
constitutional authority to make the law of the land in today’s vote to oppose
President Obama’s unconstitutional executive actions on immigration," Rep.
Raul Labrador (R-ID) said after the vote. "I am hopeful the Senate
will do its job and reassert the duty of Congress to make immigration
law."

In advance of his State of the Union speech on Jan. 20,
Barack Obama and his propaganda machine are in high gear,
claiming credit for, among other things, lower fuel prices. Though Obama has
erected an insurmountable gauntlet to oil and gas exploration leases, he
recently claimed, "We're saving drivers about 70 cents a gallon at the
pump." Really? Who is "we"? And this week, after reaffirming his
commitment to veto
the Keystone XL pipeline project, Obama had the unmitigated audacity to
again claim credit for the additional drop in prices: "America is the
number one producer of oil, the number one producer of gas. That's helping to
save drivers about $1.10 a gallon at the pump over this time last year."
Recall if you will that when Obama entered office, gasoline cost about $1.60
per gallon. In four short years, on top of the deepening Obama recession, his
severe constriction on oil production increased the price to more than $4.00 a
gallon. Ahead of the 2012 election, Obama declared, "We can't just drill
our way to lower gas prices. ... [Republicans] are dusting off their
three-point plan for $2 gas." Currently the average price for a gallon of
gas is under $2 in 18 states. But for the record, oil production on government
land is down 16% since 2009, while oil production on private land has
increased 61%. Those gains are despite Obama's obstruction of oil exploration.

Excerpt: President Barack Obama has
a moral responsibility to push back on the nation’s journalism community when
it is planning to publish anti-jihadi articles that might cause a jihadi attack
against the nation’s defenses forces, the White House’s press secretary said
Jan. 12. (C+ on trashing the second amendment, time to work on the first Don't
say those bad things about people that kill others for no reason. They might
hurt our military! Be nice and they won't hurt us! --George)

Liberals get it:
Obama is hopeless on national security. By Jennifer
Rubin

Excerpt: In liberal foreign policy circles, this is just the
latest embarrassing, infuriating instance in which they see the president
giving fuel to conservatives who deplore him as clueless about the jihadist
threat. The latest to register horror is Beltway veteran Gelb, who fumes:
“It wasn’t just because President Obama’s or Vice President Biden’s absence was
a horrendous gaffe. More than this, it demonstrated beyond argument that the
Obama team lacks the basic instincts and judgment necessary to conduct U.S. national
security policy in the next two years. It’s simply too dangerous to let Mr.
Obama continue as is—with his current team and his way of making decisions.”

Excerpt: A commander of Al Qaeda in Yemen is officially taking responsibility for
carefully planning, financing and carrying out the terror attacks
on Charlie Hebdo in Paris
last week. (Yet another group of armed, murderous Muslims who don't
understand the tenets of Islam as Imam John Kerry and Imam Barack Obama do.
~Bob)

New York Times public
editor criticizes paper for not publishing latest Charlie Hebdo cover. By Erik Wemple

Excerpt: Sullivan today writes
with greater condemnation of the newspaper’s decision not to publish
the latest image from Charlie Hebdo, which is on the cover of this week’s
edition (at top). Though The Washington Post’s news operation and the Wall
Street Journal published this week’s cover after refraining from trafficking in
controversial Charlie Hebdo drawings of Muhammad last week, Baquet stood pat —
a call that Sullivan criticized: “With Charlie Hebdo’s expanded press run of
millions of copies for this post-attack edition, and a great deal of global
coverage, the image is being seen, judged and commented on all over the world.
Times readers should not have had to go elsewhere to find it.” (Cowardice
cloaked in the cause of multicultural principle. The left's staple. ~Bob)

Excerpt: Rather than fall quiet as requested during a
national minute of silence last week, three boys in Hamid Abdelaali’s high
school class in this heavily Muslim suburb of Paris staged an informal protest, speaking
loudly through all 60 seconds. Across France, they were not alone. In one
school in Normandy,
some Muslim students yelled “God is great!” in Arabic during that same moment.
In a Paris
middle school, another group of young Muslims politely asked not to respect the
minute, arguing to their teacher, “You reap what you sow.”

Excerpt: French President Francois Hollande has announced
that the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier is ready for use in military
operations against Islamic State in Iraq. The warship is to work in
cooperation with coalition forces combating the militants.

Excerpt: Hate preacher Anjem Choudary has called the latest
front cover of Charlie Hebdo an “act of war” against Muslims. The magazine
features Mohammed crying and holding a “Je Suis Charlie” sign, with the headline
roughly translating to “Everything is forgiven”.

But Choudary was unimpressed with the offering from the
remaining staff at Charlie Hebdo claiming it was “ridiculing” Mohammed. He said
the magazine was attacking the Muslim leader’s personality, and that publishing
it was “extremely serious”.

Excerpt: A religion that commands murder as the punishment
for blasphemy offends the God it professes to worship. In reality, it worships
the Devil. And by such deeds as the half-random murders of innocent people ye
shall know that truth. Is Islam that religion? For most of the world’s 1.6
billion Muslims, it is not. ... That
is not so, however, for a large minority of Muslims — maybe hundreds of
millions worldwide — who cleave to interpretations of their faith that enjoin
murder, rape, torture, and cruelty as pious, even mandatory, acts. They take
their diabolic faith seriously, and the result is what we saw in Paris today.

Turkey Will Fight Islamic Extremism, as Soon as
It Finds Some. By Burak Bekdil

Excerpt: Turkish politicians are not shy about going as far
as to claim that the Paris
attack could be a non-Muslim conspiracy to fuel Islamophobia in the Western
world. A member of parliament from Turkey's ruling Justice and
Development Party [AKP] has claimed that the attack was "staged like a movie
scene." Ali Sahin sent a series of tweets saying the lack of traffic in
the Paris
street during the attack was "thought-provoking" and that it seemed
"as if it was a movie scene." He also claimed that the "Allahu
Akbar" (Allah is greater) rallying cry of the assailants was "a
fabricated mise-en-page [layout]," apparently mixing up the French phrase
"mise-en-scène."

Excerpt: That jihadis and other ISIS-type militants gained
the most from Western intervention in Libya four years ago cannot be
denied. Simply looking at the treatment of Christian minorities—the litmus test of the radicalization of any Muslim
society—proves this. Thus, today, Monday, January 12, "A Libyan affiliate
of the Islamic State (ISIS) has claimed the abduction of 21 Coptic Christians
and released pictures of the captives." It is not clear if these 21 are in
addition to the 13 Christians kidnapped days earlier on January 3.

Nancy Pelosi to name first Muslim lawmaker to House
intelligence committee. By Lauren French

Excerpt: Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi announced in
a closed-door meeting Tuesday she would name the first Muslim lawmaker to the
House’s Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. A senior Democratic aide
said Rep. André Carson of Indiana
would be named in the “coming days” to the key national security-focused panel.
Pelosi (D-Calif.) told lawmakers of the appointment during the members’ weekly
caucus meeting. (Folks, we know we have lost control of our government when a
Muslim Brotherhood operative is about to be appointed to the House Intelligence
Committee. Andre Carson, a Muslim Congressman from Indiana with ties to the Islamic Society of
North America and a backround in Marxist Black Liberation Theology will now be
privy to intelligence information which he can then transfer to the Muslim
Brotherhood and its military wing, Hamas. As I have repeatedly stated, the
Islamist infiltration is very deeply rooted. We can no longer look to
government to protect us. His appointment should be blocked and to that end,
please demonstrate your outrage by calling and writing to your legislators. Perhaps
if there is enough outrage, we can make a difference. --Shari
Goodman)

As a Muslim, I’m fed up with the
hypocrisy of the free speech fundamentalists. By Mehdi Hasan

Excerpt: You and I didn’t like George W Bush. Remember his
puerile declaration after 9/11 that “either you are with us, or you are with
the terrorists”? Yet now, in the wake of another horrific terrorist attack, you
appear to have updated Dubbya’s slogan: either you are with free speech . . .
or you are against it. Either vous êtes Charlie Hebdo . . . or you’re
a freedom-hating fanatic.

I’m writing to you to make a simple request: please stop.
You think you’re defying the terrorists when, in reality, you’re playing into
their bloodstained hands by dividing and demonising. Us and them. The
enlightened and liberal west v the backward, barbaric Muslims. The
massacre in Paris
on 7 January was, you keep telling us, an attack on free speech. (The media
here ran "Piss Christ" for decades, but most refuse to reprint the
Mohammad cartoons, even when key to understanding the story. ~Bob)

Paris policeman’s brother: ‘Islam is a religion
of love. My brother was killed by terrorists, by false Muslims’

Excerpt: Speaking for a group of relatives gathered in Paris, Malek Merabet said the
terrorists who ignored his brother’s plea for mercy as he lay wounded on the
street may have shared his Algerian roots, but had nothing else in common. “My
brother was Muslim and he was killed by two terrorists, by two false Muslims,”
he said. “Islam is a religion of peace and love. As far as my brother’s death
is concerned it was a waste. He was very proud of the name Ahmed Merabet, proud
to represent the police and of defending the values of the Republic – liberty,
equality, fraternity.” (As I've said before, the vast majority of the victims
of Allah-murder are other Muslims, who believe slightly differently, or are in
the wrong place at the wrong time. ~Bob)

Excerpt: Personally, I'm so sick and tired of hearing how
Islam is a "religion
of peace" and how it is tolerant and all the taqiyya
nonsense it spews. Last year, Pamela Geller covered Asia Bibi's plea
to Pope Francis as she sits on death row, awaiting to be hanged for
insulting Muhammad, and her insult was even greater than that of Charlie
Hebdo. Asia Bib is in Pakistan
and under Sharia law, she was convicted of the crime of blasphemy and sentenced
to be hanged in 2010. She is a wife and also a mother to five children who
desperately want their mother to come home. (Or will John Kerry say that Pakistan
doesn't understand the real Islam? ~Bob)

Here’s a Picture of
an Israeli Soldier the Media Will NEVER Report [PICTURE]

Excerpt: For example, whereas Hamas had this mentally ill
Palestinian chained to a wall, this IDF soldier is treating him like a human
being with needs like all the rest of us . ... But there were also story
after story — largely ignored by the liberal media — of both the IDF taking
extreme measures to prevent
civilian casualties — even going so far as to provide advance warning
of their targets — as well as Hamas going out of its way to ensure that
civilians were hurt — and gloating
about it afterward.

Excerpt: WHILE THE world fixated on the terrorists in
and around Paris last week, another slow and
grisly massacre was taking place in Nigeria, at the hands of the
Islamist militants of Boko Haram. The group launched an offensive Jan. 3 in the northeastern state of Borno,
overpowering a military base in the town of Baga that was hosting multinational. Days
later, it carried out what Amnesty International has called the “deadliest act” in the group’s history .

Excerpt: OxfordUniversity Press (OUP)
has banned authors from depicting pork-related products in their children's
books in an apparent attempt to avoid offending Jews and Muslims, the Daily
Mail reports. The new prohibition came up during a conversation
about free speech on Radio 4's Today program and was referred to as
"nonsensical political correctness."

Excerpt: One of the reasons I avoid attending Friday congregations
at mosques is a specific ritual supplication uttered by Imams at many mosques
in Canada
and around the world, just prior to our formal Friday community
prayer, the Juma'a. In the supplication, the cleric prays to Allah for, among
other things, to grant "Muslims victory over the 'Qawm al-Kafiroon,'"
the Arabic phrase that lumps all non-Muslims — Jews, Hindus, Christians,
Atheists, Buddhists and Sikhs — into one derogatory category, the
"Kuffar", or non-Muslims.

Excerpt: I think I speak for most people when I say, if you
don’t like America
then pick up your crap and move back to Suckistan. Apparently, for radical
Muslims, the murder of ten
journalists at the offices of French newspaper Charlie Hebdo
didn’t go far enough to silence opposition to their extremism. Now they are
demanding that Fox News fire any hosts who speak ill of Islam or the Prophet
Muhammad.

Excerpt: Killing civilians was "standard operating
procedure" for the Palestine Liberation Organization and Palestinian
Authority during Yasser Arafat's reign during the early 2000s, an attorney
representing American victims of Palestinian terrorist attacks told a jury
Tuesday.

Excerpt: Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said in an interview
broadcast on Sunday that the United
States might want to "re-examine"
the timetable for removing the remaining U.S.-led coalition troops in the
country by the end of 2016. "Deadlines concentrate the mind. But deadlines
should not be dogmas," Ghani told the CBS program "60 Minutes"
when asked about the issue. (Makes sense. When the Taliban take over, in
addition to reestablishing terrorist training camps to attack us, stoning
adulterers, executing apostates and gays, they will surely behead the member of
the Afghan government who worked with us. ~Bob)

Excerpt: For non-Muslims, the right to blasphemy is also the
right to believe. While we may think of blasphemy in terms of the Charlie Hebdo
cartoons, each religion is also mutually blasphemous. Muslims argue that the
West should “respect prophets” by outlawing insults to Mohammed and a panoply
of prophets that it gathered from Judaism and Christianity. But Islam considers
the Christian view of Jesus to be blasphemous and Christianity considers
Islam’s view of Jesus equally blasphemous.

Excerpt: An alleged sympathizer of the Islamic State terror
group was arrested in Ohio
on Wednesday after authorities learned that he was plotting a shooting and
bombing attack on the U.S. Capitol. Christopher Lee Cornell, 20, of GreenTownship,
considered members of Congress as "enemies," and planned to travel to
Washington to
kill employees and officers working in and around the U.S. Capitol, according
to a criminal complaint. (I'm for giving him a fair trial and shooting him, not
necessarily in that order. ~Bob)

1 comment:

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